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Chapter 16. Is (dark) hermeneutics sustainable? Water, paper, ink

In Plato’s Phaidros writing resembles the pharmakon, antidot and poison all at once. Derrida dedicates his book Dissemination to the discourse about the pharmakon and writing concluding: “The pharmakon and writing are thus always involved in questions of life and death.”1 This is not a metaphor. Why? Pharmakon also means “not a natural color but an artificial tint, a chemical dye”2, which dissolves perfectly […]